dew
Feral Kid
Posts: 1558
Registered: 05-08 |
hmm. the review seems to be quite controversional, causing drama in /newstuff comments and all. i have to admit it's too long for my limited attention span, but i read a few parts and i'd have to both agree and disagree with some points being made. still, i don't want to argue in a point-by-point rebuttal, so i'll do my own review. map-by-map, as usual. :P
i love the original gw and i helped playtesting the later betas, so i'm not exactly impartial, but i'm one of the more active DM players on zdaemon, so it might be interesting to compare notes with people of other... preferences. or maybe not. as a sidenote, i haven't played 'the originals', i haven't even seen most of them, so i won't be comparing like r did. anyways, here goes.
MAP01 - The Desecrated Ruins - Hellbent/Craigs
design: this is a classic in the original gw spirit. centered around ssg action and open design, just begging to be used for ffa with controlling spawns and crowded areas. surely more vertical than gw1, but that's a common feature for the whole wad and it's the main distinguishing feature imo. it can bear 1on1, but... well, all the weapons thrown around indicate it wasn't the intent, like with many gw1 maps. i don't understand the point of the plasmagun, though. the open design and truckloads of hitscan weaponry makes it a poor choice for... anything. so the pillar isn't the map's focal point it probably should've been. 7/10
detail: tasteful. map looks great, the detail doesn't hamper the gameplay one bit afaik, i dig the greek(?) ruin theme. it only becomes bland-looking at high gamma (more than usual) and players with white/gray jackets get invisible. but hey, even zdaemon has 'override opponent color' now, so no big deal. overall a good detail job, 8/10
MAP02 - Chinook - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: an awesome multipurpose map. both 1on1 and ffa felt great here and i'm not saying that just because i raped everyone i played. :) a bit cramped maybe, but overall i think this map has a great flow. 9/10
detail: this map looks detail-heavy, but it's actually not. there's some floor detail, but it doesn't affect movement. there's some wall detail, but it's blocked for jumping on. that might bother someone attempting to hide in a nook he sees, but as i argued earlier, that'd promote camping to an insufferable degree. so... should it be there, then? i don't know. i don't mind it at all, but that's just my opinion. the map looks nice with it. the color palette might be a bigger problem. i often found the opponent hard to spot in such a rich background. needs override color -> pink :) 6-7/10 (depends on individual tastes)
MAP03 - Enter Baal's Sinister Wargrounds of Hate - Hellbent/Rottking
design: this is clearly a 1on1 map, ffa felt ridiculous as everyone kept rushing the ssg/bfg room to get fast frags. i haven't played enough duels here to pass a judgement, though. it's even 'less ballanced' than entryway and the gameplay with one player dominating the map and the other being defensive is much harder to evaluate. it might work and it might not. i'm not confident enough to tell, but the wing with just chainsaw scares me. ?/10
detail: i usually love whatever rott touches and i don't see anything wrong here. looks nice and there's no detail hampering your movement. exemplary. 8/10
MAP04 - Mayan Ryan - Hellbent/esselfortium
design: a very simple design. it's fun at 2 to 4 players, just raging ssgs in all the open space, but it gets simplistic and rather annoying over that limit. the RL is fine, but plasma seems totally pointless again, so putting it on a trap-like elevator is even more discouraging. 7/10 for intended usage, 5/10 for high player ffa.
detail: viz map01, i really like the ruins style. the darker floor helps avoid the chameleon players problem, too. there's some essel-floor detail, but it actually helps with some jumps instead of ruining them. makes the map an eye candy, but still simple. great job, 9/10
(except the exit area, meh. that shouldn't have been there at all!)
MAP05 - Filth Factory - Hellbent/Butts
design: at first i was like meh, because this map brings a change of pace, but it it actually is fun. just slower paced, with hallway surprise encounters rather than open space rampages. unlike r, i'm not impressed by the teleports, but i love the rl/plasma weapon grab by rushing from the opposite side, and the outer rooms. i still don't understand that rocket on top of the crates, though. it's just so... phalic. :) 7-8/10
detail: again, it looked rather disappointing at first, but i learned to like it. it's simple and doesn't disturb the player even at high gamma. i like those cables hanging from the ceiling, too. i'd only argue about the support pillars in the outer rooms... they look nice, but they might obstruct movement and are useless for cover. not a big issue, though. 8/10
(+ a wtf exit area again. why?!)
MAP06 - Escape From Philadelphia - Hellbent/Rottking
design: hell yes. a very sweet NS-style (mouselook, maybe item resp) duel map! it's tiny yet ballanced... RL and PG are surprisingly prominent for a hellbent map. :) removing one of the spawns near the blind door definitely helped, although it's still way too tight in ffa. definitely just for the 8-players brit10 crowd of zdaemon (retards). oh, and the exit area isn't such a stupid appendix, yay. 9/10 for duels, uhh/10 for ffa.
detail: rott is king. it's not an artistic jewel, but there's nothing to complain about here. a modestly detailed map without gameplay clashes. 8/10
MAP07 - Catarhactes - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: this feels like greenwar revisited. a large sized flat map, relatively complicated winded hallways and a fun mechanism accessing the strong weapon. yay! the health/armor cellar is a bad idea though, the plasma rampart would be enough. fun gw1 style ffa overall. 7-8/10
detail: what detail? iirc this was a late addition to the wad so mek rushed the detail job. anyone complaining about him overdoing the details... just give him only one day to finish them and he'll make an oldschool looking map with decent visuals. :) 5/10 if you're into beauty, 10/10 if you're a gw1 fundamentalist
MAP08 - Memnoch - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: i'm not sure if i just haven't played the map enough, but i can't find it appealing :-/ i've played it only in high count ffa, though. the central area seems prominent, but from my experience noone wanted to be there and people stacked in the tiny roofed outskirts. i think the plasma should've been a bfg and the roofed parts shoudl've been larger. 4/10
detail: well, it's hard to be impartial about detail on a map you don't exactly like, but the red floor and sky made me uneasy. it's clashing with the green/brown parts and i wanted the map to be over asap. that's bringing the rest down, cause the roofed areas are nice. 6/10
(i think this was a late addition, i don't remember the map from the betas)
MAP09 - Ascensio - Hellbent
design: this map reminds me of gw1 map16 and map17 (some of my favourites) and it almost works similarly in both 1on1 and ffa. but it's SO cramped it's very uncomfortable to move around. i'd probably widen all the hallways by half! there's no room to dodge, so ssg encounters are about who shoots first... and RL/PG are way too brutal in ffa. although it's almost certain you're gonna blow yourself up with rockets. 5/10 (-3 for the claustrophobia)
detail: there's none, so i won't evaluate.
MAP10 - Absinthe - Hellbent/brinks
design: quite simple. i haven't played 1on1 here so i'm not sure about the dynamics of it, but ffa is straightforward ssg action. sorry other weapons :P overall it feels like a derivative of map04, just with a different twist. 6-7/10
detail: woah. beautiful! one wonders how the outlying areas would play like, making the map larger and more varied... anyways. the PG part is really cramped and weird, but no one ever uses PG anyways, so you're free to enjoy the lovely details and sceneries and get killed while doing so. :) 10/10
(btw, really awesome exit area, but i doubt it's justifiable in a duel map)
MAP11 - Schism - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: this map is very complicated and confusing. and cramped. i have yet to play a duel here, but ffa is quite the clusterfuck centered on the tiny area where the green armor is. everything else wasn't yielding enough frags and people stumbled around stupified. the design is intriguing, but again... i'd make everything at least twice as big! 5/10
detail: no obstructive decorations, mostly just thematic textures and colour schemes. i don't know how much mek added to the design itself, but the detail is modest and restricted, so nothing to complain about. 7/10?
MAP12 - Graceful Onslaught - Hellbent/Craigs
design: i dislike this map personally, but i heard people praising it after a game. i guess it's a love/hate thing. the central uberlift area is definitely very interesting and i've seen players revel in doing laps around the map, raping others as they spawned. i'd give it 5 or 6/10, but i think others would go as high as 8
detail: hmm.. the map is certainly very nice. just sorta not very gw-ish. it looks like a cameo appearance from the udm series. :) also i'm not sure about some of the pointy corners sticking out. 6 or 8/10, depends if we consider gw-theme as a factor.
MAP13 - Tesseract - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: fun! retains the gw1 feeling, although it's still smaller than most of the maps of the predecessor. works very well in ffa, you can decide if you want to keep it safe with the cover of the inside corners or just go apeshit in the outside area (which yields frags faster). 7/10
detail: seems okay to me. colours are easy on the eye and do not obscure opponents, not as agressive as mek's map02. the outside wall snags, though, so one should stay away from it. also the blind corner in the exit area is silly. 7/10
MAP14 - Turquoise Hexagon Sun - Hellbent/esselfortium
design: decent. the bfg is imo VERY cheap and can brutally dominate the map in ffa, while the plasma is almost impossible to get and it's just cell ammo anyways. therefore people don't go into that part of the map much and concentrate near the BFG and RL, which is surprisingly effective with mouselook on ffa. the map doesn't feel very greenwarish overall and essel's pick of textures reminded me of what it resembles - crudream. 6/10
detail: ouch. i seriously underestimated how annoying the floor decor was here when i tested it in beta. some parts feel like riding a bike over a cobblestone road. also the walls tend to have some detail that sticks out into the playable space. quite interesting sidenote: while mek's overdetailed walls tend to be 'snaggy', essel's are 'bumpy'. you can find yourself thrown around after touching the wall, an effect i usually experience only with a high ping during online games. it looks nice, but this is the point where the detail becomes very obstructive to gameplay. and i'm sorry i underestimated it during the testing. 4/10 (after a huge gameplay penalty)
MAP15 - Superfluo - Hellbent/Mechadon
detail+design: i fucking love this. gw1 stuff with modern looks. it needs at least 6-8 players to populate the map, though. it's VAST. another gw1 legacy feature. 11/10.
MAP16 - Recycle or Die - Hellbent/Mechadon
design: another map that resembles the usual gw1 maps in size and gameplay both. it's reaching the size where you can choose a part of the map you will fight in, which is how the original is played. requires at least 6 players to get really interesting. the interesting lift idea from map12 is reused, but this time in a map i like, yay! 8/10
detail: very nice imo. the dominant green colour might resemble map02, but it's a different shade that doesn't hide the opponents as much. there's nothing obstructive except some snaggy fences around the outer border. interesting exit area, it's rather open and therefore sort of playable, although i still don't see the point of including them. 8/10
MAP17 - Milton - Hellbent/Cybershark
design: another large gw1-style ffa map. open areas for mad ssg battles, winding hallways for surprise attacks and hiding, maybe some rocket spam... classic dw1 stuff = awesome. 9-10/10
detail: i like the theme and careful non-obstructive detailing, but i'm affiliated with shark too much to grade it. :)
MAP18 - Through the Nuking Glass - Hellbent/Rottking
design: i still think the BA is overpowered, but otherwise? this map is tits. you need a large number of players to fill it up, but then... there's so many things to do and so many different ways to win. 10/10
detail: i have some small issues about some of the inner detail (too tacky possibly?) and the soulsphere lift is still totally unmarked (too secret?), but the outside area is the best. overall, one of the best looking maps without being disruptive to gameplay or even attention. 9/10
ok halfway through... i can't go on atm.
edit: a small correction in the map10 part
Last edited by dew on 01-31-10 at 01:06
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01-14-10 21:58 
